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Isochrony in English Speech: Its Statistical Validity and Linguistic Relevance

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Isochrony in English Speech: Its Statistical Validity and Linguistic Relevance W. JASSEM, D. R. HILL, I. H. WITTEN Isochrony in English Speech: its Statistical Validity and Linguistic Relevance 1. Introduction In her review of recent work on rhythm in English speech, Lehiste (1977) shows that there has been disappointingly little agreement among specialists as to the validity of the isochrony principle, ranging from fairly strong textbook affirmation, such as the oft-cited description by Pike (1945: 34) or a more up-to-date formulation by Ladefoged (1975: 102-103) through doubt and scepticism (e.g. O’Connor, 1965; Bolinger, 1965; Uldall, 1971) to downright rejection (e. g. Lea, 1974; Shen and Paterson, 1962). Her own experiments lead Lehiste (1973; 1975; 1977) to the conclusion that “... there were some aspects of the data that spoke for the presence of isochrony, and other aspects that spoke against it” (1977: 256). According to Lehiste, isochrony is most evident at the perceptual level, but seeing that the sensation of rhythmicality must reflect some properties of the signal, she also made measurements of the sound wave and produced evidence in favour of a certain measure of isochrony, which she related to syntax. The relation is an inverse one in the sense that if the (tendency for) isochrony is destroyed by “an increase in the interstress interval”, then this is a sign of the presence of a syntactic boundary. One might perhaps re-interpret Lehiste’s conclusions in a direct sense as assigning to isochrony a function of internal syntactic cohesion. One of the major merits of the extensive treatise on the rhythm of spoken English by Adams (1979) is a most exhaustive historical survey of previous work in the area, with laudable emphasis on the widely overlooked ideas of the early phoneticians. It transpires that much of the present-day thinking and argumentation on the rhythmicality of spoken English was anticipated in the preceding centuries, beginning with John Hart and Joshua Steele, the latter having strongly influenced Abercrombie’s (1964; 1973) theory, which will figure prominently further on in this paper. Also, in direct relation to one particular problem considered here, John Hart (Adams, 1973: 22-23) related ‘accent’ (equivalent to the early 20th century ‘stress’) to ‘melody and rhythmus’ rather than loudness and he was aware of rhythmical (accentual) units of speech such as ofanapple, fromtheCitie, “rediscovered” 30 years ago by one of the present writers (Jassem, 1949; 1952). 204 W. Jassem, D.R. Hill, I.H. Witten It is also noteworthy that a difference of opinion as to whether pauses in speech should be counted in the rhythmical structure of English can be traced to the late 18th and early 19th century, J. Steele supporting the pause and J. Odell opposing it (Adams, 1979: 29-30). 2. The Theory The general problem is so well-known that it will scarcely be necessary to expand on it. Hardly any present-day textbook of English phonetics (or phonology) fails to mention rhythmicality as reflected in the (approximate) isochrony ‘interstress intervals’. Some of the major, more specific, questions, are: 1. What are the relations between rhythmicality (and isochrony) in the acoustic signal and rhythmicality as a percept? 2. What are the appropriate measurement procedures to be applied to the speech wave which would test the hypothesis of rhythmicality? 3. What is the experimental design of appropriate perceptual tests? 4. How are the results of measurements and perceptual tests to be evaluated? 5. If the ‘isochrony effect’ is present, does it primarily affect the length of the entire syllables, or the duration of the constituent segments (phones)? 6. If isochrony is primarily reflected in the length of entire syllables, does it affect all the syllables of the rhythm unit (‘bar’, ‘foot’, or whatever) or only the accented (‘stressed’) syllables? 7. If isochrony is primarily reflected in the duration of the phonetic segments (phones), does it affect all the segments, or some of them only, and how? 8. Is rhythmicality equally effective in all styles of speech, or is it a dependent variable, being, for instance, more evident in verse reading, less so in prose reading, slow and deliberate speech, and perhaps least evident in fast, casual discourse? 9. Is rhythmicality an effect of accent, or is accent the effect of rhythmicality? 9a. If accent is the cause rather than the effect of rhythm, then which phonetic attributes are relevant for accentuation?1 10. If there is an isochrony effect, then (a) how can it be quantified, (b) how can the quantitative statement be used to describe the strength of the effect, and (c) how strong has the effect to be in order to be treated as phonologically relevant? 1 9a is only included here because the question has often been begged. But the answer is in fact a crucial premise in the theory of isochrony and rhythm. This has most fully been realized by Adams (1979), see especially her introduction and Chapter 6. Isochrony in English Speech 205 11. What are the relations, if any, between the rhythm units and syntax or morphology? The investigation reported on below proposes a method which may give partial answers to points 2 and 4. It also assumes a hypothesis related to point 7 and tests it statistically, leading to a possible answer to 10 a and b. Reference will also be made to point 11. 3. Two Specific Theories of English Speech Rhythm Two specific theories of the rhythm of spoken English have been proposed. The one, which will here be referred to as (A), was first put forward by Abercrombie (1964, 1973), and the other, referred to as (B), by Jassem (1952), (slightly modified in Jassem, 1980 and 1981).2 Apart from the fairly obvious postulate that both theories submit, viz. one of a tendency towards equality of interstress intervals, they have one important premise in common. They do not start off with any higher-order syntactic units of which the rhythm units would be constituents. In fact, the ‘beats’, or ‘bars’, or ‘feet’, etc. of either theory, though possibly correlated with syntactic entities, are independent of them.3 Abercrombie’s theory was further developed by Halliday (1970) and Witten (1977). The two theories may be summarized as follows: (A) Abercrombie 1. The rhythm unit, called FOOT, always begins with a stressed syllable, consequently any unstressed syllable follows a stressed one within the same Foot. All unstressed syllables may therefore be described as postaccentual (or postictic). 2. If any utterance begins with an unstressed syllable, a silent stress is posited, this being an abstraction manifested as zero sound, i.e. not materialized objectively, though real psychologically (subjectively). 3. A disyllabic foot is triple-timed and may be represented by one of the following structures: ∪ — (short-long), ∩ ∩ (medium-medium), or 2 Jassem 1980 and 1981 are recent editions of earlier works first published in 1954 and 1962 respectively. The modifications of the original 1952 version of (B) contained in these works were proposed long before the results of the present investigation were available, though they are largely borne out by it. 3 In this, as in other aspects, the position of both authors are drastically different from those assumed by the proponents of any variety of Generative Phonology. But it may be interesting to note that Jassem’s ‘rhythm units’ seem to coincide with Chomsky and Halle’s ‘phonological words’. The locution (utterance, tone-group, sentence, etc.) The book was in an unlikely place is analysed into three ‘phonological words’ (Chomsky and Halle 1968: 367-368): the-book was-in-an-unlikely place. Exactly the same division is obtained by applying the principles expounded in Jassem 1952. Abercrombie’s interpretation would be entirely different: the | book-was-in-an-un- | likely | place. 206 W. Jassem, D.R. Hill, I.H. Witten — ∪ (long-short). The original version of the theory did not discuss feet of more than two syllables, and this part of the theory was supplied by Witten (1977). This mora-based structure of rhythm was not insisted on by Halliday (1970). 4. The internal rhythmic structure of a Foot is inherently related to its segmental structure, e.g. (C)V1CV(C)4 and (C)V2(C)V(C) both produce ∩ ∩, etc. Abercrombie adds, however, that “the phonematic structure of the syllable may ... at times be quite irrelevant” (1964: 217). 5. There are certain relations between rhythm and syntax. For instance, the quantities depend on the presence of a word boundary” (ibid, p. 219). There is a rhythmic difference between a one-syllable word followed by an unstressed syllable of a word which is not directly related syntactically, e. g., (take) Grey to (London) as opposed to Greater (London)—and a word followed by an enclitic, e. g. take it, tell him. It is pointed out that enclitic treatment of monosyllables is “not entirely clear” (p. 221), some other cases of “rhythmic linking” being piece of, may there (be), etc.5 6. Stress is assumed (see, e. g., Abercrombie, 1967: 35; Ladefoged, 1975: 222) to be increased effort (or energy). The notion of stress is primary in relation to the notion of rhythm. (B) Jassem 1. English speech consists of two kinds of rhythm units: (a) Narrow Rhythm Units (NRU) and (b) Anacruses (ANA). For a given tempo, the length of a narrow rhythm unit depends on the number of syllables. This length is a constant for a monosyllabic rhythm unit and a given tempo, and may be denoted by Y As the number of syllables in a narrow rhythm unit increases, the length of the narrow rhythm unit (NRU) also increases, but not proportionately. A two-syllable NRU is longer than a monosyllabic one, but it is distinctly less than 2Y.
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